All beings rest in the Lord, and he rests in none of them.
Krishna names the relation between himself and all that exists: the whole world is pervaded by him in a form no sense can reach, every being stands in him, and he stands in nothing. The dependence runs one way only; their being stands by his being, and his asks nothing of theirs.
This whole world is pervaded by me in my unmanifest form. All beings dwell in me, but I do not dwell in them.
Chapter 9 has just promised Arjuna the kingly knowledge, the open secret that frees; with this verse Krishna begins to declare it, starting from his own pervasion of all that is.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
He fills this whole world, not as the body standing before Arjuna, but as a being too subtle for any sense to reach.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Madhva · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Sivananda · Ramsukhdas · PuruṣottamaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 12 others’ words
Krishna opens his promised teaching by declaring that the whole world is pervaded by him in his unmanifest form. The key word is 'avyakta-murti,' literally 'one whose form is unmanifest.' This does not mean the Lord pervades through his visible body; it means he pervades through a nature that lies beyond the reach of the senses. The commentators answer an unspoken objection here: if Krishna is a limited person standing before Arjuna, how can he fill the entire universe? The reply is that he fills it not as that body but as his true, subtle, sense-transcending being. Several voices unpack 'avyakta' precisely this way: as the supreme Self beyond the senses, knowable only through inner vision rather than eyes or instruments.
Nothing stands by itself; from Brahmā to a blade of grass, every being leans on a support deeper than itself, and that support is the Lord.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhedābheda, Kashmir Śaiva, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Bhāskara · Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Sivananda · Ramsukhdas · PuruṣottamaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 12 others’ words
Because the Lord is the ground of everything, all beings stand in him: 'mat-sthani sarva-bhutani,' all beings are established in me. This covers the entire range of existence, from Brahma the creator down to a blade of grass, an ant, or a clump of grass. The reasoning is that nothing has independent footing of its own. A thing exists only by leaning on a support deeper than itself, and that support is the Lord. The commentators repeatedly say beings have no self-standing being apart from him; they abide in him as their substrate or as the cause on which their very existence rests.
Yet the holding runs one way: like space, which carries every form and is touched by none, he holds all beings and rests in none.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhedābheda, Kashmir Śaiva, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Bhāskara · Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Sivananda · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 11 others’ words
Yet the verse immediately balances this with an asymmetry: 'na cha aham teshv avasthitah,' and I do not abide in them. All beings rest in the Lord, but the Lord does not rest in beings. The commentators are careful to explain why this is not a contradiction. The relation runs one way only. Beings depend on him for their being; he depends on them for nothing. A common image is space or ether: it holds all forms within itself, yet is not touched, contained, or contained-in by any of them. The Lord is the 'in-which' of all things and the 'in-them' of none.
Do not hear distance in this denial; he is more inward than space itself, only never contained, for what touches nothing cannot be held inside anything.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Sivananda · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 6 others’ words
A subtlety several commentators raise: it can look to a careless or 'dull-witted' observer as though the Lord, being the very Self of all beings, must dwell inside them. The verse heads off that mistake. Precisely because the Lord is unattached and without ordinary contact, he is not lodged inside beings the way clay sits inside a pot or a thing sits inside a vessel. He is more inward than space itself, and what makes no contact cannot be contained as a thing held within another. So the denial 'I am not in them' is not a denial of his nearness but a denial that he is contained or limited by anything.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Advaita Vedānta, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse through superimposition: the world is not ultimately separate from the Lord but is imagined upon him by ignorance, the way a snake, a stream of water, or silver is mistakenly seen on a rope, on the ground, or in mother-of-pearl. The Lord, as pure non-dual consciousness, being, and bliss, is the real substrate; the world only seems to exist and shine by borrowing his reality. On this view 'beings abide in me' means they have no being of their own at all apart from the Self, exactly as imagined silver has no existence outside the shell. And 'I am not in them' follows strictly: there can be no real relation between the imagined and the real substrate, since the substrate is never actually touched by what is falsely projected on it. One of these voices develops the verse as a deliberate teaching device, comparing it to pointing out a faint star by first pointing to a bright one nearby: the world (the 'gross' pointer) is used to point the seeker toward the subtle, causeless, pure Self, identified here with supreme bliss. When ignorance ends, the very appearance of separate beings vanishes and only the Self remains.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse as describing the Lord as the inner ruler (antaryamin) of a world that is fully real. The world, both conscious and unconscious, is pervaded by him not as illusion but as that which he owns, upholds, and governs from within. Their scriptural anchor is the 'inner ruler' passage of the Upanishad: 'he who, standing in the earth, whom the earth does not know... whose body the earth is, who governs it from within.' So beings stand in the Lord as a body stands in relation to the self that rules it; they are real, dependent, and governed. 'I do not abide in them' here means the Lord's own standing does not depend on them and he draws no support or benefit from them; the dependence is wholly theirs. One of these voices reads 9.4 together with 9.5 and insists the two are not contradictory but two complementary statements of one 'lordly yoga' (aishvaram yogam): the Lord's way of containing and supporting is sui generis, pervading without being exhausted, supporting without being supported, bringing forth without being affected.
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
This commentator gives a spare reading that keeps both the pervasion and the asymmetry without resolving them into illusion. The Lord pervades all by his unmanifest form, the Self that is beyond the senses and subtle; beings therefore stand in him. The reason he does not abide in them is stated directly and almost as a self-grounding fact: 'because I stand in my own greatness.' His footing is in himself, not in the beings he upholds.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators are mainly concerned with placing the verse correctly in the chapter's argument rather than expounding its metaphysics at length. The point of 'avyakta-murti,' in the unmanifest form, is to answer why the all-pervading Lord is nonetheless not seen everywhere: he pervades by a form beyond the senses, so universal pervasion and invisibility are consistent. One of these voices clarifies that the 'knowledge' being declared here is what was earlier promised in the chapter, and that the qualifying word 'unmanifest' is not idle: it removes precisely the objection that if he pervades all, he ought to be visible everywhere.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse as the Lord's own self-becoming. The 'avyakta,' the imperishable (akshara), is the Lord's own greatness, in whom prakriti and purusha rest as non-conflicting attributes; he is also the indweller. By his own embodiment as the inner controller he has spread out the entire universe of conscious and non-conscious being in its material form. Their scriptural support includes the 'inner ruler' passage and the Brahma-sutra teaching that Brahman is both the efficient and the material cause, becoming the world by real transformation as earth becomes a pot or milk becomes curds. So the pervaded world is nothing other than the Lord's own self-becoming through his indwelling form. One of these voices adds the inner sense that the Lord stands in each thing in the form proper to that thing, from a tuft of grass up to Brahma, and that this presence, brought forth for his own play (lila), is not perceived by all because it is unmanifest.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
This commentator reads the verse as a statement about awareness and its self-veiling. 'All beings rest in me' because, however far one searches, no other ground of support can ever be found than the Lord. The denial 'I do not abide in them' is explained psychologically: when beings come forward presenting their familiar insentient, knowable, object-like form, that very appearance veils the abiding reality, which is awareness, its exact opposite. The Lord is not 'in' beings because to find him there would mean to find awareness where only the veiling object-form is being put forward.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse as the Lord disclosing the majesty his devotees should know. The world is pervaded by him as its causal ground; one cites the Shruti, 'having created it, he entered into it.' Beings therefore rest in him as effects rest in their cause, the way pots rest on clay; yet he does not rest in them, because he is by nature unattached (asanga), like space, which holds forms but is touched by none. The point is that containment requires the very attachment the unattached ground lacks, so the Lord is at once omnipresent and untouched. One Gaudiya voice stresses that he enters as the inner controller by his own portion to support and govern. The Marathi voice develops the self-becoming images warmly: as milk thickens into curds, a seed grows into a tree, or gold is worked into ornaments, so the Lord's congealed unmanifest essence thins out into the visible universe; beings appear reflected in him like foam on water, while he is not reflected in them, just as dream-objects are not found in waking and water is not found in the foam.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These commentators present the verse as a paradox that dissolves under careful thought rather than a real contradiction. One states it plainly: all beings dwell in the Lord and yet do not dwell in him, and he does not dwell in them; just as space holds all beings without being touched by them, so the Supreme holds everything untouched, and even the root-substance of the world (mulaprakriti) rests on it while it rests only in its own glory. One frames the whole as the Lord pervading the universe by his imperceptible form, beings being in him while he is not in them. The most expansive modern voice works it as two reciprocal pairs seen from two standpoints: from the everyday view the world is in the Supreme and the Supreme in the world; from the standpoint of truth, since beings have no independent reality apart from him, only the Supreme is, appearing as the many, like water appearing as a wave or clay appearing as a pot. He grounds 'I am not in them' in changelessness: if the Lord were lodged in beings, their birth, decay, and limitation would become his; but in him there is not the slightest modification, so 'I am in them' can only mean that by his being alone is their being.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Carry this verse into how you live with the people and circumstances entrusted to you. Just as the Lord sustains all beings yet places no 'I' or 'mine' in them and depends on none of them, the seeker too can maintain a family and look after them without lodging his sense of self in them, and without considering himself dependent on any place, time, or situation. Whatever situation arrives, whatever event occurs, whatever stray thoughts rise in the mind, learn to see in all of it the Lord's play and stay content and unattached. There is even a quiet test of whether the truth that 'all this is the Supreme alone' has truly sunk into the heart: praise of your understanding should not make you feel large; respect or insult should leave no trace; and even a thorough attack on your view should awaken no sense of lack and stir no disturbance. You should feel no urge to win the argument with proofs, and no pride that this is 'my' doctrine. When the realization is genuine, it stays steady, unbroken, and effortless, needing no defense at all.
Care for what is given into your hands the way he carries the world: holding everything, lodged in nothing.
Read deeper
Everything a full study holds, folded below.
Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
rishna opens his promised teaching by declaring that the whole world is pervaded by him in his unmanifest form. The key word is 'avyakta-murti,' literally 'one whose form is unmanifest.' This does not mean the Lord pervades through his visible body; it means he pervades through a nature that lies beyond the reach of the senses. The commentators answer an unspoken objection here: if Krishna is a limited person standing before Arjuna, how can he fill the entire universe? The reply is that he fills it not as that body but as his true, subtle, sense-transcending being. Several voices unpack 'avyakta' precisely this way: as the supreme Self beyond the senses, knowable only through inner vision rather than eyes or instruments.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama
Because the Lord is the ground of everything, all beings stand in him: 'mat-sthani sarva-bhutani,' all beings are established in me. This covers the entire range of existence, from Brahma the creator down to a blade of grass, an ant, or a clump of grass. The reasoning is that nothing has independent footing of its own. A thing exists only by leaning on a support deeper than itself, and that support is the Lord. The commentators repeatedly say beings have no self-standing being apart from him; they abide in him as their substrate or as the cause on which their very existence rests.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Bhāskara · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama
Yet the verse immediately balances this with an asymmetry: 'na cha aham teshv avasthitah,' and I do not abide in them. All beings rest in the Lord, but the Lord does not rest in beings. The commentators are careful to explain why this is not a contradiction. The relation runs one way only. Beings depend on him for their being; he depends on them for nothing. A common image is space or ether: it holds all forms within itself, yet is not touched, contained, or contained-in by any of them. The Lord is the 'in-which' of all things and the 'in-them' of none.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrī Bhāskara · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
A subtlety several commentators raise: it can look to a careless or 'dull-witted' observer as though the Lord, being the very Self of all beings, must dwell inside them. The verse heads off that mistake. Precisely because the Lord is unattached and without ordinary contact, he is not lodged inside beings the way clay sits inside a pot or a thing sits inside a vessel. He is more inward than space itself, and what makes no contact cannot be contained as a thing held within another. So the denial 'I am not in them' is not a denial of his nearness but a denial that he is contained or limited by anything.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse through superimposition: the world is not ultimately separate from the Lord but is imagined upon him by ignorance, the way a snake, a stream of water, or silver is mistakenly seen on a rope, on the ground, or in mother-of-pearl. The Lord, as pure non-dual consciousness, being, and bliss, is the real substrate; the world only seems to exist and shine by borrowing his reality. On this view 'beings abide in me' means they have no being of their own at all apart from the Self, exactly as imagined silver has no existence outside the shell. And 'I am not in them' follows strictly: there can be no real relation between the imagined and the real substrate, since the substrate is never actually touched by what is falsely projected on it. One of these voices develops the verse as a deliberate teaching device, comparing it to pointing out a faint star by first pointing to a bright one nearby: the world (the 'gross' pointer) is used to point the seeker toward the subtle, causeless, pure Self, identified here with supreme bliss. When ignorance ends, the very appearance of separate beings vanishes and only the Self remains.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators read the verse as describing the Lord as the inner ruler (antaryamin) of a world that is fully real. The world, both conscious and unconscious, is pervaded by him not as illusion but as that which he owns, upholds, and governs from within. Their scriptural anchor is the 'inner ruler' passage of the Upanishad: 'he who, standing in the earth, whom the earth does not know... whose body the earth is, who governs it from within.' So beings stand in the Lord as a body stands in relation to the self that rules it; they are real, dependent, and governed. 'I do not abide in them' here means the Lord's own standing does not depend on them and he draws no support or benefit from them; the dependence is wholly theirs. One of these voices reads 9.4 together with 9.5 and insists the two are not contradictory but two complementary statements of one 'lordly yoga' (aishvaram yogam): the Lord's way of containing and supporting is sui generis, pervading without being exhausted, supporting without being supported, bringing forth without being affected.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhedabheda
This commentator gives a spare reading that keeps both the pervasion and the asymmetry without resolving them into illusion. The Lord pervades all by his unmanifest form, the Self that is beyond the senses and subtle; beings therefore stand in him. The reason he does not abide in them is stated directly and almost as a self-grounding fact: 'because I stand in my own greatness.' His footing is in himself, not in the beings he upholds.
Śrī Bhāskara
Dvaita
These commentators are mainly concerned with placing the verse correctly in the chapter's argument rather than expounding its metaphysics at length. The point of 'avyakta-murti,' in the unmanifest form, is to answer why the all-pervading Lord is nonetheless not seen everywhere: he pervades by a form beyond the senses, so universal pervasion and invisibility are consistent. One of these voices clarifies that the 'knowledge' being declared here is what was earlier promised in the chapter, and that the qualifying word 'unmanifest' is not idle: it removes precisely the objection that if he pervades all, he ought to be visible everywhere.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the verse as the Lord's own self-becoming. The 'avyakta,' the imperishable (akshara), is the Lord's own greatness, in whom prakriti and purusha rest as non-conflicting attributes; he is also the indweller. By his own embodiment as the inner controller he has spread out the entire universe of conscious and non-conscious being in its material form. Their scriptural support includes the 'inner ruler' passage and the Brahma-sutra teaching that Brahman is both the efficient and the material cause, becoming the world by real transformation as earth becomes a pot or milk becomes curds. So the pervaded world is nothing other than the Lord's own self-becoming through his indwelling form. One of these voices adds the inner sense that the Lord stands in each thing in the form proper to that thing, from a tuft of grass up to Brahma, and that this presence, brought forth for his own play (lila), is not perceived by all because it is unmanifest.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator reads the verse as a statement about awareness and its self-veiling. 'All beings rest in me' because, however far one searches, no other ground of support can ever be found than the Lord. The denial 'I do not abide in them' is explained psychologically: when beings come forward presenting their familiar insentient, knowable, object-like form, that very appearance veils the abiding reality, which is awareness, its exact opposite. The Lord is not 'in' beings because to find him there would mean to find awareness where only the veiling object-form is being put forward.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
These commentators read the verse as the Lord disclosing the majesty his devotees should know. The world is pervaded by him as its causal ground; one cites the Shruti, 'having created it, he entered into it.' Beings therefore rest in him as effects rest in their cause, the way pots rest on clay; yet he does not rest in them, because he is by nature unattached (asanga), like space, which holds forms but is touched by none. The point is that containment requires the very attachment the unattached ground lacks, so the Lord is at once omnipresent and untouched. One Gaudiya voice stresses that he enters as the inner controller by his own portion to support and govern. The Marathi voice develops the self-becoming images warmly: as milk thickens into curds, a seed grows into a tree, or gold is worked into ornaments, so the Lord's congealed unmanifest essence thins out into the visible universe; beings appear reflected in him like foam on water, while he is not reflected in them, just as dream-objects are not found in waking and water is not found in the foam.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators present the verse as a paradox that dissolves under careful thought rather than a real contradiction. One states it plainly: all beings dwell in the Lord and yet do not dwell in him, and he does not dwell in them; just as space holds all beings without being touched by them, so the Supreme holds everything untouched, and even the root-substance of the world (mulaprakriti) rests on it while it rests only in its own glory. One frames the whole as the Lord pervading the universe by his imperceptible form, beings being in him while he is not in them. The most expansive modern voice works it as two reciprocal pairs seen from two standpoints: from the everyday view the world is in the Supreme and the Supreme in the world; from the standpoint of truth, since beings have no independent reality apart from him, only the Supreme is, appearing as the many, like water appearing as a wave or clay appearing as a pot. He grounds 'I am not in them' in changelessness: if the Lord were lodged in beings, their birth, decay, and limitation would become his; but in him there is not the slightest modification, so 'I am in them' can only mean that by his being alone is their being.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If everything rests in God and nothing has independent existence, why does God say he is not in things, and how can he be everywhere yet untouched by anything that happens to them?
The two statements describe one relationship from two sides, not a contradiction. Beings rest in God because nothing has footing of its own; a thing exists only by leaning on a support deeper than itself, and that support is the Lord. So 'all beings stand in me' simply names total dependence: from Brahma down to a blade of grass, their being is borrowed from his being.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
'I am not in them' denies the reverse direction. The Lord depends on nothing, draws no benefit from beings, and is not lodged inside them the way clay sits in a pot or an object sits in a vessel. The favorite image is space: it holds every form within itself yet is touched and contained by none. Because the Lord is unattached by nature, he is the 'in-which' of all and the 'in-them' of none.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Sivananda · Śrī Bhāskara
He stays untouched by what happens to things precisely because he is not contained in them. If he were lodged in beings, their birth, change, decay, and limitation would have to become his; but in the Lord there is not the slightest modification. So 'I am in them' can only mean that by his being alone is their being, never that he shares their fortunes. That is why he can be wholly present everywhere and yet wholly free of all of it.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Contemplation
Carry this verse into how you live with the people and circumstances entrusted to you. Just as the Lord sustains all beings yet places no 'I' or 'mine' in them and depends on none of them, the seeker too can maintain a family and look after them without lodging his sense of self in them, and without considering himself dependent on any place, time, or situation. Whatever situation arrives, whatever event occurs, whatever stray thoughts rise in the mind, learn to see in all of it the Lord's play and stay content and unattached. There is even a quiet test of whether the truth that 'all this is the Supreme alone' has truly sunk into the heart: praise of your understanding should not make you feel large; respect or insult should leave no trace; and even a thorough attack on your view should awaken no sense of lack and stir no disturbance. You should feel no urge to win the argument with proofs, and no pride that this is 'my' doctrine. When the realization is genuine, it stays steady, unbroken, and effortless, needing no defense at all.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, tap a name in The seating.